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Breaking and Entering

Synopsis

Set in a blighted, inner-city neighbourhood of London, Breaking and Entering examines an affair which unfolds between a successful British landscape architect and Amira, a Bosnian woman – the mother of a troubled teen son – who was widowed by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A film like Crash but with a smaller circle. It has some good performances in it and that is the films saving grace. Ray Winstone is the person who I feel like is underused in it and doesn't get much to do. I feel like Freeman had a bigger part in the film but once it got edited down, his role was cut down as well. I'm glad to watch another good Jude Law performance from him but I don't entirely believe the marriage between him and Robin Wright is valid and would last that long. Clearly Anthony the director and Jude work well together but this film was nothing compared to his other bigger films like Cold Mountain and Thr Talented Mr. Ripley considering I've never sought it out until now.

I can't say I'm a fan of Anthony Minghella. I find most of his works incredibly dull and poorly constructed despite what I can see is the best of intentions behind it. Despite this I could see his craft overall improving as he went. This being his last film put a stop to that of course and I hate to say it but this has all the same problems as his previous works: its simply not interesting.

Anthony Minghella was a great director and storyteller especially with The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient but he missed a beat when he made this lacklustre effort. Featuring a strong cast of Jude Law, Robin Wright-Penn and Juliette Binoche this should have been another string to Minghella's bow. Unfortunately missing the impact of his previous works this was a little all over the place narratively. A box office flop, I'll only remember this for Vera Farmiga's tittie show as an eastern European prostitute. Law is sappy,Wright Penn overacts as always and only Binoche has any semblance of quality,although her accent is particularly dodgy. Inner city London will no doubt have loved it's depiction as a cess-pit of crime and prostitution populated by immigrants from eastern Europe,no doubt the tourist industry have thanked the Weinsteins. Disappointing.

Juliette Binoche is really the highlight of this film. The cast is very good overall, but most of their characters are bland and stereotypical enough that they don't make the impression they should. Binoche alone manages to rise above the thin, mediocre script and infuse her performance with real life and intrigue. The score to this film is also wonderful and interesting, and Minghella's talent as a director really shows through in the film's technical aspects. I wanted to love this film given its many obvious strengths, but it really does feel thin, middling and disappointing in just about every other way. The pacing is very odd--the film putters along quite slowly, seemingly setting things up and then haltingly advancing…

It's a shame this was the last big screen effort from Anthony Minghella. Not necessarily because it's a bad film, but it's simply an above average effort from a director who's been much better, and often. If anything, it's mostly just disappointing. Minghella mainstays Jude Law and Juliette Binoche are characteristically strong in their roles, but the various relationships and the deceitful motivations that complicate them are so murkily sketched in the screenplay that they're left in the cold to the whim of Minghella's broader statements on the plight of war-worn immigrants and class discrimination.

Written and directed by Anthony Minghella, who also produced along with Sydney Pollack, Breaking and Entering reminds us of how much talent we have lost with the passing of these two men. Set in London, every aspect of this film is gorgeous; it's so refreshing to see a film set in a cosmopolitan city other than NYC. The cinematography perfectly frames Jude Law, Robin Wright and Juliette Binoche as one "theft" leads to another, and the ethereal score speaks to the fragility of each of the characters as they sort through life's complications. Kudos to Minghella for recognizing the strengths and limitations of Vera Farmiga. Her ten minutes of screen time as a brassy and bored prostitute are exactly the right dosage of her particular brand of spice. Meow~

Juliette Binoche is really the highlight of this film. The cast is very good overall, but most of their characters are bland and stereotypical enough that they don't make the impression they should. Binoche alone manages to rise above the thin, mediocre script and infuse her performance with real life and intrigue. The score to this film is also wonderful and interesting, and Minghella's talent as a director really shows through in the film's technical aspects. I wanted to love this film given its many obvious strengths, but it really does feel thin, middling and disappointing in just about every other way. The pacing is very odd--the film putters along quite slowly, seemingly setting things up and then haltingly advancing…

A film like Crash but with a smaller circle. It has some good performances in it and that is the films saving grace. Ray Winstone is the person who I feel like is underused in it and doesn't get much to do. I feel like Freeman had a bigger part in the film but once it got edited down, his role was cut down as well. I'm glad to watch another good Jude Law performance from him but I don't entirely believe the marriage between him and Robin Wright is valid and would last that long. Clearly Anthony the director and Jude work well together but this film was nothing compared to his other bigger films like Cold Mountain and Thr Talented Mr. Ripley considering I've never sought it out until now.

I can't say I'm a fan of Anthony Minghella. I find most of his works incredibly dull and poorly constructed despite what I can see is the best of intentions behind it. Despite this I could see his craft overall improving as he went. This being his last film put a stop to that of course and I hate to say it but this has all the same problems as his previous works: its simply not interesting.

It's a shame this was the last big screen effort from Anthony Minghella. Not necessarily because it's a bad film, but it's simply an above average effort from a director who's been much better, and often. If anything, it's mostly just disappointing. Minghella mainstays Jude Law and Juliette Binoche are characteristically strong in their roles, but the various relationships and the deceitful motivations that complicate them are so murkily sketched in the screenplay that they're left in the cold to the whim of Minghella's broader statements on the plight of war-worn immigrants and class discrimination.